Roberta Williams

King's Quest breakthrough (1983–1994)

By 1983, Sierra's new investors pushed the company to diversify into video game cartridges for platforms such as the Atari. The video game industry soon experienced a crash, and Sierra's board of directors began to push a merger with Spinnaker Software, an educational software company. When Spinnaker presented their proposal to the Sierra board, Roberta proclaimed, "These guys are a joke. No one in the industry respects them. Can't we talk about something productive?" Although Ken Williams was amenable to the deal, Roberta strongly opposed it, and the merger did not proceed. Sierra was forced to downsize to 30 employees, and the Williams family mortgaged their home to pay their remaining employees.

Sierra had cultivated a strong relationship with IBM as the IBM PC was being developed, and Wizard and the Princess was one of the first games released for the computer under the title Adventure in Serenia. Around the time of Sierra's financial difficulties, IBM offered to invest in the struggling company, with hopes of creating a game that could showcase the technical capabilities of their upcoming IBM PCjr. Roberta had wanted to build on her experience with The Wizard and the Princess with a fully animated adventure game, in a pseudo-3D world. This led to the 1984 release of King's Quest, conceived as a blend of common fairy tales that could be directly experienced as a game. Although the PCjr was considered a failure, King's Quest was ported to many other platforms and quickly rose to bestseller status. The game was considered revolutionary for its pseudo-3D elements, becoming the first adventure game to allow the player character to move in front of, behind, or over other objects on the screen. It was also the first computer game to support the 16-color EGA standard, setting a new standard for future graphic adventure games.

Meanwhile, Roberta continued her role as designer of the King's Quest series, which earned a reputation for its unique style of storytelling, as well as its increasingly advanced graphics and technology. The 1986 release of King's Quest III: To Heir is Human was larger and longer than previous games in the series, and earned a ranking on Time's list of 50 Best Video Games of All Time. When King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella was released in 1988, it was one of the first games to receive sound card support, and one of the first adventure games to support a mouse. It was also one of the first games to feature a female protagonist, a creative decision that Williams seeded by introducing the character in the previous game. Some of her peers cautioned that this might deter men from playing the game, but it was even more commercially successful than previous installments. A post-release survey revealed that most men did not mind playing as a female protagonist, whereas many female players preferred the experience. Sierra received registration cards for the game with a near 40% female audience, leading journalists to credit Williams with expanding the player base for personal computer games. King's Quest IV has been considered one of the most influential video games of all time, impacting the design of games such as Maniac Mansion and other LucasArts adventure games.

Williams continued to design other titles, such as the educational title Mixed-Up Mother Goose. The game went on to sell more than 500,000 copies, and the CD-ROM version earned the Software Publishers Association Excellence in Software Award for Best Early Education Program. In 1989, Williams released another mystery adventure game called The Colonel's Bequest, which iterated on ideas from her original Mystery House game with more detailed graphics and improved text parsing. The game was still rare for featuring a female protagonist, and deviated from the traditional adventure game formula to become more of an interactive mystery, putting more onus on the player to discover the plot. The 1990 release of King's Quest V became the first game to use an icon-based interface, continuing the series' innovations in game design. The game was critically acclaimed, winning several awards upon release, with Computer Gaming World including it in their 1996 list of greatest games of all time.

By the early 1990s, Sierra was a publicly traded company, generating $100 million per year in revenue. The company released The Dagger of Amon Ra in 1991, a sequel to The Colonel's Bequest based on characters and concepts created by Williams. Meanwhile, Williams worked with Jane Jensen to design King's Quest VI. Released in 1992, it was recognized by several publications as one of the best adventure games, if not one of the best games overall. By the mid-1990s, Williams was considered the company's most popular game designer, particularly for her success with the King's Quest series. The saga is still remembered as the only video game series created and maintained by a female designer.

Later games and career exit (1995–1999)

Williams branched out from her work on King's Quest by designing Phantasmagoria, a realistic horror adventure game. As a long time fan of the novels of Stephen King, she had often contemplated whether it was possible to create a terrifying video game. Because she believed it would be difficult to make a truly frightening game without live actors, the game was created entirely in full-motion video. The production ultimately cost $4 million, with a team of nearly two hundred people and a script of more than five hundred pages. Designed as a mature title for adults, the game was marketed as an interactive film, and published on seven CD-ROMs. Although Phantasmagoria received a mixed critical reception, it was one of the most commercially successful adventure games and Sierra's bestselling game, selling more than a million copies upon its release in 1995. Williams recalls the game as her favorite achievement.

In 1996, Sierra was sold to CUC International for more than a billion dollars in stock. Roberta had opposed the deal, and several other high-ranking Sierra employees had felt there was something suspicious about CUC's financials. Roberta ultimately acquiesced, recognizing that the terms of the deal were too favorable to refuse, and that she could be sued by their shareholders if she failed to maximize their value. The company's management and decision-making dramatically changed under CUC, leading Ken Williams to leave his role at Sierra and work directly for their new parent company. The CUC restructuring also led to lay-offs. Roberta Williams took a sabbatical from the game industry, as the company released The Roberta Williams Anthology, a compilation of 14 games.

Roberta Williams returned to game development in early 1997 to work on King's Quest: Mask of Eternity. She hoped to re-introduce some interactivity absent in Phantasmagoria, and to embrace the advances in 3D graphics technology. Sierra had changed significantly as a company, and its new management insisted on adding elements from popular role-playing games such as Diablo, while straying from the game's traditional adventure elements. When she removed certain role-playing elements, the team would re-add them, leading to a power struggle with management. Roberta's frustrations with her lack of control were coupled with suspicions of CUC, after allegations of financial fraud had surfaced about the company. Worried about the company's future, she talked to Ken about selling their stock. The couple soon divested from the company, Ken resigning at the end of 1997, and Roberta staying to finish Mask of Eternity. Released in 1998, the game was considered a commercial and critical disappointment, leading to further layoffs, and the sale of Sierra to Vivendi. That year, CUC was convicted of financial fraud, having exaggerated their revenues by more than half a billion dollars (equivalent to $990 million in 2025). The decline of Sierra had an emotional impact on Roberta, who left the company in 1999. By the 2000s, Sierra's assets were held by Activision Blizzard, after a merger between Activision and Vivendi.